Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-08-25
DAILY HERALD.
AN UTTER ERROR.
sSLamd Speculation i'm southern
Californian


date quotes as follows from the Dallas,
Texas, News:
"Reports which have been published
from tourists have made mention of
the process of cutting up ranches into
town lots, cutting down orange trees
aud uprooting vines in order to put the
lots into shape for disposal to Eastern
buyers. Numerous people have gone
to the neighborhood of. Los Angeles
with speculative views. Many others,
it is understood, are sending money
to be invested for rise. These vent
ures can be regarded with compara-
tive coolness here in Texas, as pre-
sumably no great amount of the
money of Texas is involved in
them. People away up toward New
York and Boston, and in other parts
of the North, are the most numerous
portion, it is understood, among those
who are sending their funds for the
speculative investments alluded to.
OF course there will be collapse.
Man however, do not care so much
about that, provided they can buy
while the boom is on and sell again
before the eagerness to buy shall have
reached its climax. For those who
will speculate, no matter what moral
or general considerations may be
urged against doing so, the chief thing
is to get pointers showing how high
the booming tendency is likely to go.
A private letter received from
a former resident of Texas gives
his recent experience. He had
bought a few acres near Los Angeles
four years ago at about $40 per
acre. Four months ago he sold
the small tract for $4,000. Now he
observes it is salable by the succeed
ing owner at $4,000. The rise in this
instance is phenomenally rapid.
Taken in connection with the great
extent of land being laid out in town
lots-enough to make one of the larg-
est cities on the continent, and that in
a place where there is no rational
prospect or use for a very large city
the rapidity of the recent rise in prices
being at once an indication of the
feverish stage and a fresh incentive
to the laying out of more lots, must
show that the elimination OF this
extraordinary boom is likely to be
measured by weeks or months. If
the case cited be an average, boom
which in four months runs up lands
from the price of $500 an acre to over
1920 an acre for prospective building
purposes where there is plenty more
land offered for the same purposes
must be measurably within some
moderate time limit, assuming that
the prices reached cannot be main
tanned upon a basis of any real and
permanent use to which the property
might be put. 1t is for the speeulat-
lively disposed person to calculate for
himself the rate at which the iron
which he thinks of grasping is getting
hot, and what will be the prospect OF
having to drop it ruefully, for as soon
as confidence is destroyed the down.
ward rush of speculative values, So
called, is usually very rapid in those
cases where they have gone far be-
youd what use will sustain"
Commenting on this, the Shreve-
port paper goes on to say on its own
account the following, in the same
strain:
.'The Times has repeatedly warned
the people Of Shreveport, who have
been allured from their pleasant
homes by the rapid advance in real
estate in certain parts of California.
There are number of citizens who,
being influenced by the gains in in
vestments of their friends already in
California. are making preparations
to sell out their homes, to move to
the speculative fields in that State.
They should bear in mind that there
is limit to all things in this mum
dane sphere, no matter how brilliant,
and the wild speculative scheme now
raging in California must come to an
end sooner or later.
1t is conceded that the climate of
California is one of the most glorious
in the world, especially for certain
class of invalids, but people of robust
health cannot subsist on air alone.
California is also renowned for orange
and fruit groves and vineyards, but
lacks in the necessary agricultural
requisites to maintain the cities that
have been mapped out on paper. In
our opinion the cutting down of orange
and fruit groves and vineyards and
the dividing of ranches into town lots
for speculative purposes will hasten
the collapse of the California boom
which has already influenced too
many of our best citizens to forsake
their homes and friends in their
eagerness to accumulate fortunes.
When the climax is reached it is to be
hoped that the Shreveport people now
i'm California and those that my go
there soon, will not suffer from the
financial crash"
The HERALD is read great deal
both in Dallas and in Shreveport. For
the benefit of its readers, of the public
generally and of the editors of papers
in that part of the country particu-
iarly, there is this to say;
First, 1t will not make much differ
ence what the papers there have to
say of California. Their own readers
know they cannot speak er cdttedrd on
the subject. They do not know the
elements in the case, and therefore
are not prepared to speak intelligently.
Second, So many people are now
resident of this section who were for
merly of Texas and Louisiana that
anyone contemplating removing from
there to here would not fail to avail
themselves of the advice of
some friend or acquaintance al
ready on the spot, who can
speak of South California from actual
knowledge. 1t is to such sources a
practical person would turn for advice.
When eastern papers speak of Cali
fornia as possessed of fine climate
and nothing more; as being suited to
orange culture, but not to general ag-
ricultural pursuits OF people living on
air; of the rapid rise in land being a
certain prognostication OF collapse
they are talking at random, and they
are talking nonsense.